TwentySix Moons
by Kilerkki
Summary: Gekkou Hayate is fourteen years old when he falls in love. Hayate, his sword, and a moment spent dancing beneath the crescent moon. [Oneshot]


Twenty-six Moons

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I started this in February of 2006 as a birthday present for the lovely nezuko. Unfortunately, though I had loads of fun playing with pretty words, the plot refused to come. Five months later, I'm deciding to look at it less as a story and more as a vignette--a slice of life, capturing one moment of Hayate's struggle and determination to fight on against the odds. Of course, I prefer to believe that Hayate just had a bad cold while he was proctoring the Chuunin exams (more tragic that way!) but this story worked much better with him suffering from tuberculosis, or perhaps from a lung-damaging jutsu during his own chuunin exams. Poor boy.

But if you want to see him alive, check out revanche (underscore) rpg on livejournal. It's a slightly altered universe set during the Chuunin exams. Nezuko plays Hayate there, and I play the amazing Purple-Haired ANBU Chick, Uzuki Yuugao!

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_Twenty-and-eight are the phases of the moon,  
The full and the moon's dark and all the crescents,  
Twenty-and-eight, and yet but six-and-twenty  
The cradles that a man must needs be rocked in:  
For there's no human life at the full or the dark._

--"The Phases of the Moon," by W. B. Yeats

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He's fourteen years old when he first sees one of his uncles perform the Dance of the Crescent Moon, and for three nights after that he lies awake for hours, his mind spinning with the silver sweep of swords. Every time he closes his eyes the dance plays out again on the insides of his lids, leaping, flying, slicing down in a spin so graceful it cuts into his heart. He dreams restlessly, tossing as if somehow he can struggle his way out of sleep and into the dance, where his thin fragile limbs strengthen and straighten, where his lungs fill with the full perfect breaths he can hardly ever take, where his kata achieve the perfection of the dance only dream can perform.

On the third day he gathers up the courage to go to his uncle. He waits till after dinner, when his mother is busy with the dishes and his father has gone to play shougi with a friend, and then he buckles his katana to his back and steals out the house with steps so light his mother never turns. He holds his breath until he's three houses down and can finally stop, leaning against a telephone pole, and choke out the cough that's ravaging his lungs.

When he straightens there's a spot of blood on his palm. He wipes it quickly against his trousers and spits out the rest of the bloody mucus coating his mouth and tongue, and then he goes on, a little faster, trying to breathe as shallowly and evenly as he can. If he coughs too much, or if he's out of breath when he reaches his uncle's house, there's no hope. But if he can somehow convince his uncle that he's taken a turn for the better…

His mother's always complaining that he's too thin, too small, too pale. He can't do much about the first two, despite eating everything he can choke down at every meal and begging food off his teammates whenever he can, but he slaps his cheeks briskly as he jogs down the street, trying to force a little blood into his pale flesh. He won't cough, he promises himself; he'll breathe carefully and he'll talk slowly, and things will be okay.

Gekkou Hayate has always been good at lying to himself.

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His uncle is gone when he arrives. His aunt answers the door, wiping her hands with a dishtowel and turning her head to call over her shoulder to one of his small cousins; when she turns back the look of annoyance is replaced by one of pity. No, her husband isn't there, though Hayate-kun is welcome to wait for him; the night air's bad for his lungs, he really shouldn't be out; if he'll just step inside she'll fetch him some tea…

"No, thank you," Hayate says politely. "My mother's expecting me back. Have a good night, Ba-chan."

He can feel his aunt's eyes drilling a hole between his shoulder blades as he turns and walks slowly towards his home. It might be the ninja senses Sensei is always telling them about, but more likely he simply knows his aunt. She'll stand at the door watching him until he turns the corner by the little grocer's shop, and then she'll go back inside and telephone his mother to worry aloud over him, so thin, so pale, with those dark bruises under his eyes and that unhealthy catch to his voice…

At least, he thinks vindictively, he didn't let her hear him cough.

He walks two houses past the grocer's before he stops beside a stack of lumber and tiles piled up waiting for Shibata-san to get around to fixing his roof. Shibata-san's roof is weak and leaky, but it dips low at the eaves, and it's strong enough at least to bear Hayate's slight weight. He scrambles up by way of the lumber pile and a short jump to catch his scrabbling fingers on the edge of the roof. Pulling himself up and flipping his legs over the edge doesn't tax his muscles, but as he draws himself up to his knees he coughs again. He muffles the cough in his sleeve—no blood this time, at least—and then pushes himself to his feet and starts off again in the growing darkness, a shadow slipping through paler shadows, heading towards the rising of the moon.

The training fields lie silent and empty, gilded with moon-silver, when he arrives. He drops down from the tree branches, flexing his knees and landing perfectly on his feet. A few leaves waver softly around him, but all else is still. Catching his breath takes only a few brief, shallow pants; deeper breathing makes him ache and cough, and it's not as if he ever breathes normally anyway. He picks his way among abandoned shuriken and shattered rocks to the center of the clearing, where the moonlight is bright and clean and the ground a little less rough. Then he draws his katana.

On his back, the katana is dull and heavy, dead instead of deadly, coffined in its tomb of wood and leather. In his hands, the blade is a living thing, slicing through the moonbeams, singing its song of steel as he frees it from its prison and arranges his hands on the hilt. The ridges of the cord wrappings settle smoothly into his palms, and his breath comes a little easier as he steps forward.

Lunge with a straight thrust. Spin to the side, blade arching up to parry shadows. Glide back from moonlight's riposte. Flow through the forms of the kata like silk through a woman's soft hands, breathing lightly and evenly, closing dark eyes for a moment as the world fades away in moonlight and steel.

_Live in the dance. _

-

"You look awful," Shuuichi says the next morning, shoving his bandana hitai'ate back to rub at his forehead. "Get any sleep last night?"

"Not much." Hayate pauses, waiting for the tickling in his throat to die away. His teammates, checking equipment and stretching muscles in preparation for that day's mission, don't rush him; they're used to this. After a moment, when the cough decides it doesn't want to attack him yet, he adds, "Kaa-san nearly didn't let me come today."

"Your mom worries too much," Shuuichi says dismissively. "Bet she thinks you're gonna faint on the mission or something. Hey, Iruka, you think Hayate looks like he's gonna fall over anytime soon?"

Iruka glances up from adjusting the fit of his shuriken holster, and his dark eyes go serious. "If there's a problem, you should tell sensei. This mission's just C-rank; we'll be okay without you."

"I'm fine." Hayate drops down on the bench that marks their team's usual meeting place. He wriggles a little to adjust the hang of the katana over his back, then stretches his legs out and releases his breath in a long, slow sigh. "_You _guys worry too much."

"You cough too much," Iruka says bluntly. "You've had that cough ever since the chuunin exams. Shouldn't you—?"

"Can't do anything about it." Hayate tips his head up and stares at the pitiless blue glare of the sky. Full moon in a week's time. Maybe by the next crescent he'll have the Dance… "I've been to the medics." They'd said he should retire from active duty, but who listened to the medics anyway?

Certainly not fourteen-year-old boys with their hearts already lost to the cutting wind of a sword-blade and the terrible beauty of a moonlit dance.

Certainly not Hayate.

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End file.
